Lamborghini has officially scrapped its near-term plans for an EV, pivoting harder toward hybrid tech.
The entire electric car market is on its ear a bit right now, as automakers course correct for cooler-than-expected market demand. Nowhere is that demand more frigid, it seems, than with supercars, and Lamborghini just sharply made the point by scrapping its Lanzador as a fully electric SUV.
We first saw this concept back in 2023, with Lamborghini execs then planning to bring it to market by the end of the decade. This was an era when the Lotus Eletre was going to blow everyone away, Ferrari would jump into the market with an EV of its own, and internal combustion would cease to be a part of sports car manufacturers’ long-term game plan. Now, in a report from The Sunday Times, Lamborghini CEO Stephan Winkelmann is making the anticipated pivot away from a fully electric model. (Ferrari, for its part, is still moving ahead with the 1,000 horsepower Luce SUV.)
In doing so, Winkelmann told the outlet developing an EV is becoming “an expensive hobby”, and one for which the “acceptance curve” from customers just isn’t there. In fact, he said, the demand is effectively flat-lining and “close to zero”, with folks instead wanting that noise is a major component people want from its cars. The “emotional experience”, that is, closely connects to noise as well as raw performance and looks. “EVs, in their current form, struggle to deliver this specific emotional connection”.
This latest decision came to pass after a year’s worth of internal discussion, customer engagement, speaking with dealers and analyzing market data, he said.
Here’s what we’ll see instead
So…what happens now? Well, while Winkelmann said Lamborghini would continue to produce internal combustion engines “as long as possible,” it’s not entirely moving away from electrification. That may be disappointing for some, but the brand is effectively splitting the difference by offering the Lanzador as a plug-in hybrid model. Such a move tracks with what it’s already doing (see the Lamborghini Urus SE), and just further expands buyers’ options moving forward.
Lamborghini is coming off a watershed sales year, in which it delivered 10,747 cars globally. That may not sound like a huge figure, but when you consider each of those cars costs at least six figures, it’s a massive achievement. It’s also the second successive year in which five-figure sales numbers were on the table. Winkelmann clearly is aiming to continue that momentum for the company’s bottom line and returns for its shareholders, the latter of which is a focus as the company evolves its near-term strategy.
As for full EVs, he said it could still happen “when the time is right”. That will be a long way off, though, and electrification (by way of PHEVs) will be the imminent goal for the next several years. Despite the Lanzador now arriving as a plug-in hybrid, no mention came about of an accelerated development cycle, so it may still launch around 2029 — just not as a BEV, obviously.
